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The Silent Falcon is small enough to be launched by hand. Photo credit: Silent Falcon

In a development sure to confound advocates of green power, a New Mexico startup has introduced the Silent Falcon, a six-foot-long unmanned aircraft that can be launched by hand and conduct surveillance for up to 14 hours by drawing most of its power from the sun.

It isn't available yet and comes with a $250,000 to $300,000 price tag, but the creator is getting expressions of interest from government agencies, particularly law enforcement, who could find many uses for a tiny plane that beams back high-definition video and is silent from a distance of 100 feet.

The Silent Falcon was unveiled on August 6 at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems conference in Las Vegas. The target customer isn't the U.S. military, which already has entrenched suppliers of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), said CEO John Brown in an interview Wednesday. Instead, the company has sought to sell to private military contractors working for the U.S. as well as foreign militaries in countries such as India, Thailand and Brazil.

But interest in drones in the U.S. is growing so fast that it may be time to retool the business plan.

The UAV has thin and lightweight solar panels on its wing. Photo credit: Silent Falcon

Brown ticked off a list of possible uses of domestic drones that reveals how they might zoom across economic sectors, as well as raise thorny issues for privacy. He sees potential customers among law enforcement on the city, state and federal level, as well as the U.S. Border Patrol. An eye in the sky could be used to interdict drugs, size up needs in disaster relief, ensure port security, check power lines and fuel pipelines, fight forest fires and count wildlife, Brown said. The company is waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration to finalize its rules on the use of drones in U.S. skies.

The domestic market is "not going to be an enormous market opportunity in the next year or two, but we believe it's an enormous market opportunity down the line and we want to be part of it," Brown said.

Adding lightweight solar panels to the wings of a UAV may be a game-changer. One of Silent Falcon's main competitors is Aerovironment, whose line of small, battery-operated UAVs include the Puma AE (with a maximum flight time of two hours), the Raven (90 minutes), and the Wasp AE (50 minutes).

In full daylight, the Silent Falcon claims a flight time of between six and 14 hours. The wings are covered with a sheet of thin-film solar panels, which produce less power than the polycrystalline solar panels found on buildings, but are very lightweight. They feed a battery that on its own could keep the craft aloft for four to six hours.

Adding flight time to the craft is a matter of choosing longer wings that can hold more solar panels. Three models of wing vary in length from 7 to 17 feet.

The electric motor that holds the craft aloft is supposed to be inaudible from a distance of 100 feet and is optimized for a "loiter speed" of 18 to 20 knots, a velocity at which the drone does what is intended to do -- hang around and watch. Cameras are both high-definition and infrared for night use, mounted in a pectoral fin on the plane's belly.

Silent Falcon is the newly-minted name for Bye Aerospace, a company founded in 2008 to create alternative power for aircraft. It has six employees and contracts six to eight engineers from Bye Engineering. The Albuquerque company has received $1.5 million in venture funding from 30 investors and is seeking $1.5 million more, Brown said.

Another project in the pipeline is the Snipe, a similar drone that would be mounted with guns.